Improving the Educational Practice and Placement Opportunities for Hearing Impaired Students in Computer Science Engineering

The present educational training methods present barrier for students with hearing impairment in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) in accessing both information in the classroom as well as getting trained for placement. The suggested solution by many researchers recommending mixing of such students with normal students in doing classroom and project-related activities have reported leading to some psychological problem in the students with hearing impairment. The study proposes the use of support services such as interpreters, real-time captioning, assistive tools and note-making to enhance the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process. The effectiveness of the services must be evaluated by conducting frequent tests to know about the understanding level of the students and many mock interviews have to be conducted to get rid of their fear in facing the interviews. This can be done under the supervision of a sign language interpreter. At the Kalasalingam Academy of Research and Education, an attempt is made to implement this proposed step in collaboration with the industry who gives importance to the hearing impaired students. A survey conducted for the students, as well as the recruiters, involving about 300 students and 6 recruiters, indicate that such systematic training approach gives confidence to the students and their performance is found to be almost at par with the normal students, enabling such students to be effective engineers in the computing field who can confidently contribute their services to the society.